Presently, attaching a noncontact tag of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) or the like including the information that specifies an article to the article in place of the barcode that has been fixed to the article mainly for uses in physical distribution, supply chain management (SCM), and so on has come into reality.
It is not difficult to imagine that the attaching of a tag capable of reading the attribute of the article to each individual article in such a noncontact manner can be developed into a variety of uses besides the physical distribution use.
For example, a patent document 1 (JP 2002-215848 A) discloses a system for searching for a lost article by utilizing the tag attached to the article. The system includes an investigation server provided for each specified area in a town, and each investigation server is made to control a searching device that reads the information of the tag attached to an article. Then, upon noticing the loss of a belonging, the user transmits the information of the name of the article to be retrieved (lost article name) and the retrieval area to a retrieval system server, and the retrieval system server makes the investigation server of a designated retrieval area execute retrieval. That is, each of the searching devices managed by the investigation server execute the read of the tag information. By so doing, it is discovered that the lost article exists when the information of the article to be retrieved is read by any one of the searching devices, and therefore, the retrieval result is transmitted to the user.
The system is able to largely reduce the time for searching for the lost article even when the article has been lost in a town and also specify the place where the article has been lost (the place where the lost article exists) to a certain extent of accuracy.